As humans, we consume a lot of waste products every year; with each of those years producing more waste than the previous year. An example of this waste is packaging waste, which are containers used to package goods that are immediately disposed of after use. Packaging waste, to the sea creatures of the great oceans of the world, is a massive issue that we can help solve. Many sea animals are choking and dying from the packaged waste that we are creating and we need to figure out how to solve it in order to protect these underwater beasts from going extinct.
After the packaging material is used, most of it is dumped into landfills that can be transmitted by wind or water streams into the environment. When this happens, marine life can very mistakenly believe that a piece of plastic is food. They would then digest it, only to die from it later since plastic contains very toxic chemicals when consumed. There are also many instances where sea turtles have believed that plastic bags that were floating in the sea, were jellyfish; which many of these turtles feast on. However, they have a hard time trying to chew the plastic bag, therefore, suffocating the sea turtle and killing it before it can spit out the bag. This is just one example of how cruel and inhumane it is to just let packaging wastes go unsupervised and float into the ocean and kill sea creatures every single day.
Although packaging waste is polluting the words oceans, we can still do our best to help reduce the amount of waste that is killing our marine life. One way is that we can bring our own reusable bags when we go shopping instead of using the kind of packaging that the store offers. Your bag is more likely to last for months while the store’s bags might only last a few days. Another way that we can reduce the amount of these wastes is buying in bulk. When you do this, it allows more products to be put into less bags instead of less products being put into more bags. One last thing that we can do is buy more loose products and less pre-packaged products. Loose products are anything that can be bought without the use of a packaging box or bag. Some examples of this would be fruits and vegetables. When we buy these products, we do not have to throw away the packaging since there would not be any in the first place. If we can focus on little changes like these, we can reduce the amount of packaging waste that is getting into our oceans and killing the animals that reside there.
In conclusion, humans consume products that create a lot of packaging waste every year. Most of the time, we do not even think about the impact it has on our environment; especially our oceans. However, if we give ourselves time to make the little changes to our daily lives, we can change marine life for the better and protect our oceans.
Essay by: Jake Miller Davis
Chino Valley High School
